None of my Sigma lenses will work in Live View on my d7000. I didn't think much of it and haven't contacted Sigma. But now I'm reading that a few others are seeing the same thing with the d4 and d800 and one person claims that Sigma can't fix the problem by rechipping the lens.

So, I'm interested to know if any of you have seen the problem on the new bodies and if you've contacted Sigma for a fix.

I don't use Live View that often, but for landscapes and macro, it's a nice thing to have and if none of the new Nikons will work with my Sigmas, that could be a real hassle.

I figured that it wasn't nearly as bad as the one poster was trying to claim, but I was curious to see if others had seen what I'm seeing. The vast majority of my Sigma glass is 8 years old, so it wasn't a huge surprise to me, when the issue with the d7k Live View came up on the lenses that I tested. I don't have any "new" Sigmas. My newest Sigma lens is either a 20mm or a 150, but both are well over a year old and I haven't tested them yet.

I didn't even know about the Live View issue. I was getting OOF images from my d7k & 100-300 f/4, when the lens was used at/near Infinity. So, I was going to test it, with several of my Nikkors, using Live View. That's when I discovered that LV wouldn't work with my Sigma long lenses.

All of my Sigmas work fine with the d3s, d700 and d300, including LV. They also worked fine on my d200's and d70's, but I haven't used those bodies in a while.

None of my Nikkors have an issue with LV on the d7k.

Eventually, I will test the suspect lenses on the d5100. At this point, I don't know if I have a wonky d7k or if it's just an issue with my old Siggys.

What do you meant by "they don't work"? I've seen people say that AF won't work, but not that live view doesn't work at all. I would think that if you are using live view, manually focussing would be the way to go anyways, so I see this as a non-issue.

I had a tamron 18-270 that would rarely achieve a focus lock using a d5100 + live view, sent it in to tamron and they returned it quickly and working great. I have an older sigma 120-400 OS that works just fine with D5100+D800 + live view.

Yes, there are compatibility issues with Sigma lenses. When the D7000 came out I believe most of the contemporary Sigma lenses needed firmware updates to get live view working. My Sigma 30 when paired with my D200, in addition to having schizophrenic autofocus, would render the rangefinder dot useless and would not let you override the focus in AF-S mode.

If your lens + body combo aren't working, contact Sigma support (and be prepared for some sphincter puckering amounts of ignorance at Sigma New York). On the plus side, Nikon's live view implementation is pretty bad so you're not missing out on a whole lot :P

DTOB wrote:
What do you meant by "they don't work"? I've seen people say that AF won't work, but not that live view doesn't work at all. I would think that if you are using live view, manually focussing would be the way to go anyways, so I see this as a non-issue.

Well, I don't believe that you have enough information or understanding of the issue, to make the statement that's it's a non-issue.

Live View is supposed to work with CDAF. It's part of the price of the camera. Whether or not you use it, isn't material to the issue. When I pay for something, I expect it to work as advertised.

zippy_monster wrote:
Yes, there are compatibility issues with Sigma lenses. When the D7000 came out I believe most of the contemporary Sigma lenses needed firmware updates to get live view working. My Sigma 30 when paired with my D200, in addition to having schizophrenic autofocus, would render the rangefinder dot useless and would not let you override the focus in AF-S mode.

If your lens + body combo aren't working, contact Sigma support (and be prepared for some sphincter puckering amounts of ignorance at Sigma New York). On the plus side, Nikon's live view implementation is pretty bad so you're not missing out on a whole lot :P...Show more →

Cool, thanks for the additional info. The point about ignorant customer support is one of the reasons I've not contacted them. The other is that I have 7 or 8 Sigma lenses. I need to test them all and then look at the costs involved with shipping them all to Sigma.

But, the main thing is that I have 3 other bodies that I use more than the d7k. So, until I replace those bodies, it isn't a big deal. It's an annoyance at the moment, but could be more of a significant problem if several of my bodies wouldn't work.

Kerry, I have had 2 different Sigma lenses on my D7000. The first was an older lens. The second was a new generation lens. Both worked in live view flawlessly. As a result, I can't offer you any advice. No problem here. Good luck.

DTOB wrote:
Yikes. That's a bit harsh. I did say that I see this as a non-issue, as in me, personally. I never said that should also be your position.

Whether it's a non-issue to you is fairly unhelpful information for the OP or me, for whom it is an issue.

My Sigma 50mm f/1.4 also does not AF in live view; more accurately, the AF is way off the mark, usually driving the lens to infinity no matter what the subject. I haven't resolved the issue yet; I'm hoping it's something that can be resolved through re-chipping. I'll let you know what I discover as I run the problem to ground.

I figured that it wasn't nearly as bad as the one poster was trying to claim, but I was curious to see if others had seen what I'm seeing. The vast majority of my Sigma glass is 8 years old, so it wasn't a huge surprise to me, when the issue with the d7k Live View came up on the lenses that I tested. I don't have any "new" Sigmas. My newest Sigma lens is either a 20mm or a 150, but both are well over a year old and I haven't tested them yet.

I didn't even know about the Live View issue. I was getting OOF images from my d7k & 100-300 f/4, when the lens was used at/near Infinity. So, I was going to test it, with several of my Nikkors, using Live View. That's when I discovered that LV wouldn't work with my Sigma long lenses.

All of my Sigmas work fine with the d3s, d700 and d300, including LV. They also worked fine on my d200's and d70's, but I haven't used those bodies in a while.

None of my Nikkors have an issue with LV on the d7k.

Eventually, I will test the suspect lenses on the d5100. At this point, I don't know if I have a wonky d7k or if it's just an issue with my old Siggys.

Arka wrote:
Whether it's a non-issue to you is fairly unhelpful information for the OP or me, for whom it is an issue.

My Sigma 50mm f/1.4 also does not AF in live view; more accurately, the AF is way off the mark, usually driving the lens to infinity no matter what the subject. I haven't resolved the issue yet; I'm hoping it's something that can be resolved through re-chipping. I'll let you know what I discover as I run the problem to ground.

Well, I am sorry that I failed to help you. But IMO, this is much ado about nothing.

The OP stated that it would be nice to have (presumably working AF in LV, although he never did spell out his exact problem, and then accused me of not understanding the issue, even though I clearly demonstrated that I do understand it to be an AF problem, despite his completely vague post) for macro and landscape photography, 2 types of photography traditionally accomplished via Manual Focus.

How many pro landscapers or macro'ers actually AF? I'd bet not many...

What do you mean that "LV wouldn't work"? What part of LV doesn't work? I have seen a few people mention autofocus, but you never said specifically what you mean by LV not working.

Thanks,

Jim

CDAF doesn't work with these lenses in LV. Sorry, I didn't mention it specifically, because I couldn't envision the lens causing some other kind of failure in LV. I should probably also say that the lenses are HSM.

Gregstx wrote:
Kerry, I have had 2 different Sigma lenses on my D7000. The first was an older lens. The second was a new generation lens. Both worked in live view flawlessly. As a result, I can't offer you any advice. No problem here. Good luck.

Thanks, Greg. Although the scattered nature of the problem is annoying to try to figure out, it's good to know that the vast majority of combos seem to be okay. That was one of the things that I was trying to figure out. It might be just my d7k that is a little wonky and maybe a future body that I purchase would be fine. Obviously, that would be best for me.

But, the way my luck usually goes, the lenses will all eventually have to be sent back to Sigma.